Shout outs to some wonderful authors that released their first works on Amazon, long timers releasing a new work, and a few good people who's been writing for a long time and have a worthy to donate to.
Evigkeit has the most interesting work, with "One Moo'er Plow", a isekaied human into a Minotaur, and decides to stop the life of being on the frontline to instead being a farmer. I'm sure nothing exciting will bother him. You can find his work on spacebattles, royal road, and amazon.
dp/B0CB22PBQ7?tag=r0b5d-20
To our very own SB famous author, OstensibleMammalian, who's been working on Godclads for years now. Highly recommend it, support him on his ! Spacebattles and Royal Road.
threads/godclads-a-godpunk-progression-science-fantasy-story.1048894/
fiction/59663/godclads-monster-mceldritchcyberpunkprogression
NoDragons is a name you might recognize if you're on RR much, author is esteemed works such as Oasis Core. Right now their current project is "Villain of the New World". Like all their world, it's definitely worth a look. Royal Road.
fiction/72005/villain-of-the-new-world
Last and definitely least, I'd like to shout out the degenerate Naranka, with his seminal SB based work "A light not extinguished", one of the hottest and continuing 40k work on SB. Spacebattles
threads/a-light-not-extinguished-40k-daot-what-if-fic.939626/
That concludes the shout out to me dear friends and fellow writers! Give them a shot between Viral Latency chapters!
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Chapter 9 Chapter Nine: Unsealing The Hushed Casket/To Wake A God(Beware of Lightning)
Present Day
The remnants of a severed hand are brushed clean off the console. Dust falls and settles on cracked stone and steel-toed boots. Asashima's face reflects a dull blue glow as he eyes the English text quickly scrolling past the screen, mouth set into a firm line behind his mask. He's smiling on the inside. With a gesture of his hand, the rest of his squad inspects the cryotube and the surrounding area—even Yasui, the designated survivor, joins them when the all-clear is declared.
Stepping back, Asashima paces around the equipment with forced patience. His feet tread carefully and his notepad fills out with his diligent observations. The agents back at base will comb through all of the objects later, in the lab, but their discovered state is valuable data and gives hints to their true purpose. It's a pity most machines are damaged, he thinks.
"No heart or brain activity," Yasui says. The only pristine items are the tube and power source next to him. He's fiddling with the console and has pulled up a read out. Asashima's gaze lingers briefly on the text, then drags itself back to the iced over and opaque cryotube. A curiosity rises in him. He wants to know what's inside; if there's actually a dead body. Anything could be present. Any treasure. The politicians who sent him into this cavern, banking on a hail mary, no doubt hope for their golden goose.
The team collectively and morbidly hopes whatever is inside is dead.
"…Boss, got any ideas on how to open it?" Yasui says after a short while. Frustration is visible in his body language. Asashima gets up from his crouch, jotting down details about a destroyed laptop, and walks over. He understands Yasui's impatience soon enough. The instructions aren't user-friendly at all: dense language, acronyms, and words with no context fill the screen. The blue light illuminates Asashima's narrowed eyes. He thinks deeply for a moment. Then smiles slightly, patting Yasui on the back.
"Let's unplug it." The words have Yasui scratching the side of his head in an embarrassed manner.
The designated survivor starts taking out any and all wires and tubes. A distance away, he finally unplugs the power outlet.
Shrill warning signs abruptly die as all the lights and machinery of the cryotube turn off. The magnetic locks switch off. Everything is dead and silent. The team—Ueda, Nishimura, Yasui, and Asashima himself—look at each other. A collective understanding passes through them: they've already come this far, why not farther? They act swiftly.
Asashima gives a quick update on the radio while shortened crowbars are equipped, then he takes his place with the rest of the men. They circle the cryotube, like pallbearers surrounding a casket. The crowbars plunge suddenly into the slight cracks in the opening. A slight screech is heard, as metal grinds against ice, before breaking it. The material and time may have froze the tube well, but with their combined strength, Asashima's squad lifts the opening completely.
…Asashima sees no treasure, no scientific or famous individual—just a man. A dwindling feeling fills him—there would be no miracles for Japan—but it's overpowered by relief. There's no monster to slay. The dim lighting from the squad shines on a person indistinguishable from any normal hoodlum in a prefecture. He has a black jacket, two white stripes around each arm, and his dead face is locked in a tense and painful expression. There's a mystery here, Asashima knows, but it's a mundane one for the investigators after them. The enigmatic cryotube held nothing special in the end—besides itself. That will be the true prize to his superiors.
Nishimura quietly teases Ueda about his bad feeling and omens. The latter snorts, before walking off to the side and radioing the outside forces.
"Command…Unit 939, over." A static voice answers back. Ueda nods, looking back with a wry grin. "Command, all locations searched. No hostiles detected. Word twice: no hostiles detected. No VIP discovered. An unknown corpse inhabits the cryotube, preliminary designation Yankee-Yankee-Alpha." Asashima hears more static words. "Roger. I read back: field autopsy will be performed. Unit 939, out."
Ueda looks sharply at Asashima, who nods and edges closer to the body. Like with the rest of the facility, he uses it on the organic flesh inside the cryotube. And it makes him puzzled. Asashima raises an eyebrow at the creeping decay indicative of his quirk. With the way it's reacting…it was like all of the dead man was nothing but a virus. But that's impossible, Asashima thinks. Unless—he's an experiment? Some victim of mad science, or plague, preserved as a cadaver throughout the centuries.
Asashima leans in. He's frowning as he gets a closer look at the man. He thinks something isn't right—then, all of a sudden, Asashima feels his nerves come alive with electricity. He hears a dull thump, and with rising horror, the squad leader of the NBC unit looks down.
He sees tendrils impaling him.
Asashima slumps, lower body paralyzed by the shattering of his spine, mouth unable to scream. He's dumbfounded, he's in disbelief, desperate thoughts rising up maniacally —then he's pulled into the tube.
None of the squad has a clear idea of what just took their leader. Their loyalty almost has them charging foolishly in an attempt to save him. But then their training kicks in, bodies tensing and adrenaline surging, and they fly into motion. Yasui, the designated survivor, runs away at once while screaming into his radio. He yells for a medic, for reinforcements, for All Might to crush this cursed place into rubble.
There's the sound of gas hissing as Nishimura makes preparations for his quirk. Then he rushes to join with the safety-bubble clad Ueda besides the cryotube. The upper-half of Asashima's body is still visible, being dragged in with the eerie sound of bones snapping and soft flesh being liquified. It draws a hellish fury from Nishimura, and with a precise application of flame, the tendrils encasing his beloved squad leader's body are burnt away. Ueda reaches out and begins to pull back the unresponsive but still alive Asashima. The tendrils rail against his quirk in a hungry rage. His safety-bubble is nearly shattered in seconds, but with the additional strength of Nishimaru, the two are able to engage in a morbid tug of war.
It ends with a few wet snaps and clicks. Asashima's spine and muscles are ripped apart. While what's left of the lower half disappears with a grinding, organic, and wet noise, Ueda is left holding onto the torso, head, and arms of his rapidly dying leader. He despairs as years of service and loyalty are snuffed out in seconds, and screams.
Nishimura stops Ueda from throwing away his life in futile vengeance. He pulls the man back and chucks him away, safety-bubble rolling on the ground with speed and uncontrolled direction. It pops suddenly, and with a furious nod, Ueda begins to run away too. Nishimura will join him in a moment.
Nishimura sprints around the open tube and unloads gas and sparks. The man inside screams as fire and ice create a boiling steam, and his casket-turned-grill becomes the greatest source of light in the cavern. A heavy fist narrowly misses Nishimura, instead crushing a piece of machinery.
The last squad member alive in the cavern doesn't try to engage further. He sprints away to the reinforcements closing in.
…As they all rush back outside, they don't notice the man crawling out of the tube.
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Alex is…in extreme fatigue and pain. The years and years under the ice, mind blank and thoughts empty save for a vicious genetic war, have done him no favors. Tiny ice crystals have torn him apart through constant construction and expansion. But the foreign viral presence has been wholly subsumed by him. His gambit—to lock himself into the cryotube—has worked.
And yet…his mind aches with the mother of all headaches as he tries to pull it together. His subconscious had divided itself during his time under. Different fragments of his mind had been dedicated to different tasks and potential threats. It is almost akin to a hive. Now Alex has to make himself whole psychically. It's slow-going, too slow by too many heartbeats, as the tomb of the cryotube is released. When a subfragment detects the greater body slowly decaying, when it identifies the culprit via his olfactory organs, Alex is helpless and rendered a passenger as his body reacts on autopilot. It lashes out towards the scents of gunpowder and masks. Tendrils catch prey blindly and reel in his first victim in centuries.
Mercer is barely on the level of a rabid dog as he begins to rend and tear with countless tendrils all throughout his body. It's too late to regret the self-fragmentation when human flesh is consumed with hunger. Even the strange incompatibility of the victim's body is ignored with sheer ravenous pulsing in his guts, the genetic rejection pushed through even though it feels like oil to water. It's only when the lower half is consumed that Mercer regains control of all his faculties, and he lets the upper half escape—not just for the sake of regret and empathy, but to stop the barrage of memories that will surely incapacitate him in a dangerous situation.
Dim lighting illuminates his weakened form as the man's shadow disappears. The impromptu awakening has frozen chunks of his pseudo clothes and skin, and left other parts ripped off of him, leaving bare red and black tendril muscle glistening underneath. Half of Mercer's face is exposed to the bone. The bloody half is contorted into an animalistic snarl, a remnant of his subconscious, while the human skin expresses a deep empathy—and Mercer for a brief, terrifying moment, can't tell what side bears his true feelings.
His doubt disappears as the ensuing struggle and sudden fire creates a hellish, boiling steam, deadly enough that the fat and liquids in his body sizzle away. His throat and pseudo-lungs are seared away in agony, his tongue is half-melted, and he's left looking like a half-cooked steak. A broken growl escapes his tattered mouth. It sounds like the corrupted recording of a lion's roar, distorted and skipping, and merely adds to the gaunt, pale image of his corpse-like body. Biologically created clothing sticks to him like a second skin fused by heat. Alex looks like a pathetically emaciated, starved and burned victim.
Everything is torture, and the control he just gained nearly falls apart. His cells are chomping to eat, hungry and starved of biomass for centuries, and his first real meal is a pittance that does more damage than help. Alex has no choice but to align himself with ravenous survival if he wishes to remain in control. He can barely move, time flowing like molasses, his consciousness fading in and out. A deep groan escapes his repairing throat as his starving body cannibalizes itself. The worst burn wounds are healed, slowly, and his cells gain a tighter rein on his purpose.
Alex must consume.
…When he finally staggers his way out of his frigid crypt, it is this sight he presents to the mass of soldiers gathered a distance away: a horrific hungry monster from the depths of nightmares, shuffling forwards like a zombie before stopping suddenly. Lights shine on him in their multitudes amidst a shadowy backdrop.
The array of guns ahead of him are ignored in favor of the bizarre strangers. Alex's threat detection is sounding off in primal warning. These…people have mutations even more bizarre than Redlight-infected victims. He takes them all in with weary, dangerous eyes, like a predator watching a prey they'd avoid in all other circumstances. Mercer doesn't want to fight them. Mercer needs to eat. He's still fading in and out of consciousness, and he fears his instinctual mind will be a worse monster than a sane mind could ever be. Warring desires beset his scrambled consciousness. So Mercer eyes—with his sole working eye, the other was burnt and slowly regrowing—the potential human meals before him: a dark suited person flying on nothing; a shorter, almost deformed person with an orbit of sizzling daggers; another person that looks like they could bench-press a D-Code; and dozens of tense and fearful soldiers, armed and clothed in familiar military gear. The sight of something more normal to him helped bring him down into recognizable territory.
They stare down each other for several tense, rapidly-beating heartbeats.
Mercer takes a single, shuffling, unsteady step forwards. His mouth opens in an inhuman and broken groan coming from a half-functioning vocal box.
They immediately open fire with bullets, flying knives, fire, and multicolored beams of light. So that's how it is going to be, Alex thinks with a deep regret buried underneath his starving gut.
Mercer charges. He targets the soldiers first. His body dances with the grace of a puppet on strings, legs and arms bending in unnatural angles, leaping over and ducking gunfire with cracking bones and sudden movements—then he's in front of his first victim with a bloody, hungry grin and a reaching fist. The punch in his weakened state simply cracks the poor soldier's chest instead of caving it in, so Mercer's other hand, armed with shortened serrated claws, stabs into him several times down his face to his navel. His skin splits open like a meat locker. The horrific stench is immensely satisfying to Alex's monstrous stomach. He ignores the furious gunfire, the panicked screams, the bizarre strangers repositioning themselves, as his tendrils plunge into the corpse before him. As he feeds, Mercer feels the genetic rejection again—but it's muted. His body is adapting to the biology of these people.
It takes only heartbeats to consume enough for the regeneration process. Steam boils from his skin as cells start getting to work repairing the long and new damage. The soldier next to Mercer snaps out of his horrific stance, gun clicking empty as every bullet in the magazine was fired in panic, and grabs a knife from his sheathe. The soldier starts to stab—Alex grabs the hand, snaps it in half. And wrapping his grip around the handle of the knife, he forces the soldier's fingers and weapon into his own neck. Blood sprays into Mercer's dark smile. His regrowing eye flickers briefly into something inhuman as the man bleeds out. That's…a concern for another time. Moments later, Alex has broken open the corpse's chest and consumed enough for several organ transplants. Again, Mercer leaves everything above the neck alone. The memories will make him too incapacitated. Every second matters here.
The replenishment feels too good. It's the vicious triumph of the hungry, Mercer comforts himself as he turns to his next victim. He'll feel terrible guilt and regret and all those human morals after he's had his fill. Now…well, Mercer is going to rip apart the third soldier in this company.
There's a gun about to fire at his head. Potential friendly fire is ignored with shaking hands and the soldiers behind Alex dive for cover. Mercer uses a trick he had learned from experimentation and self-mutation. A claw forms and shoots out like a crossbow, propelled by pneumatic air pressure and his own altered musculature. It punctures the other man's gut, throwing back the soldier like a ragdoll, and bones snap as he lands terribly. The gut and leg wounds won't kill him as fast the toxins in the claw.
He makes a delicious meal. Alex has killed three men within seconds. His body wants more. His mind…lets it happen.
The rest of the soldiers and strange people don't hesitate for a moment. They display a level of coordination that suggests serious training together. Like a mirage fading away, Mercer finds himself trapped in a killzone as he leaps towards the next squad of men. Under the onslaught of bullets and fire and more exotic materials, Mercer isn't lucky enough to avoid heavy burns or blows to the head. Gritting his broken teeth, Mercer pushes through as he loses strength, body still reduced from his prime due to the centuries of sleep and the hard awakening.
Plan A, Alex thinks with the resolve to drown cities in blood. It's just like the military and Blackwatch. Wipe out the soldiers, move onto armor, helicopters, then take on the D-Codes. He'll treat the mutated strangers as the latter—and it's like he's back in NYC.
An opportunity to free himself from the fuselage of fire presents itself. The next second, Alex has leapt clear over everyone, almost hitting the ceiling itself, form hidden in the darkness, then he's launching down with a push from his tendrils. The concrete roof cracks, lights snap to him in panic, and soldiers scream for a single heartbeat. Alex's impact is like the Fist of God. Men and special troops go flying everywhere.
It's like flying fish, Alex thinks with a mad laugh. The bodies launched upwards from the force, nearly all with crushing knee injuries, are picked out like a bird eating flies. Some are passed out. Some let loose a single scream or pained grunt. Alex envelopes each one in tendrils and blades, and red blood stains the floor—before that too is consumed.
The soldiers in his immediate vicinity are dead. The ones nearby wish they had died so quickly. Alex's tendrils hit the ground like a dozen jackhammers, bits of human flesh still sticking to them, and a second later, spikes shoot out from the earth like horrific bear traps. Feet and legs are subjected to sickening destruction, inhumane in treatment, and they break loudly enough to be mistaken for gunshots. Every soldier caught is out of the fight. They drop their weapons in tears while wailing and pounding on their jail. Alex launches a few as makeshift projectiles to the ones farther away, letting them absorb heavy weapons with bursting bodies, or smashing key leaders and officers to the stone.
A person with black goo pouring out of his skin strikes at Alex. He attempts to pin Alex with the adhesive flowing off his body. A punishment is meted out: his hands and feet stick to Mercer, while the rest of the body is howling away. Painful screaming rings out, answered by a sympathetic yell of rage, as one of the flying individuals snatches him out of the air and whisks him away to the exit.
Mercer is reluctant to admit it. These elite mutants are much more powerful than the D-Codes. They're not as disciplined, no, with the way they fight like they're the hero of their own story—but strong nonetheless. They twist out of the way with acrobatics or use their unique abilities to evade him entirely, making Alex feel like he's a bodybuilder among ballerinas. One unlucky, bizarre person with springs for legs and arms becomes his next meal, when he's piledrived head-first into the floor. He lacks a helmet, wearing some dark leather cap instead, and that explodes with a shower of gore clearly audible over the mayhem.
The bits of flesh and blood add to the remains coating the floor. They're all that's left of too many soldiers and mutants. The rest are settling comfortably in Alex's body subsumed entirely, as despite his enemies' efforts, he's able to devour with a hunger that has only grown deeper. It's because he's getting stronger—regaining his former strength bit by bit—and that thought has him feeling triumphant all over. Mercer feels invincible and unstoppable.
And too arrogant.
Like Icarus plummeting back to the Earth, a new force smashes him into the ground then. It impacts him with all the weight of a tank, one falling at terminal velocity, and Alex shatters concrete with his prone body. A shockwave ripples outwards. Wind blows with the fury of a hurricane.
Alex raises his head against the weight of the world. He sees a lone individual staring back at him. The mutant eyes him with a technicolor gaze, fury visible and swirling from a scant few yards away. As concrete dust embedded in Alex's hair rains down like a shower, pulled with immeasurable force, he strains his neck and back with incredulity. He's getting the distinct feeling that this person is responsible for all that weight. But Alex has carried heavier loads before. He's carried—is carrying—the hopes and dreams of everyone he's ever consumed. So Alex does what he always does, buffeted by a terrible rage, and gets back up on one foot.
The weight increases.
Mercer gets on one knee.
The technicolor gaze is surrounded by burst capillaries as weight increases yet again.
Alex stands under his own power, hardened tendrils piercing the ground, giving the stability and leverage needed to launch a bloodthirsty smile.
His foe's eyes are bleeding heavily, and she directs a fierce scowl at him. There's a dim satisfaction in her expression, though, as the daggers controlled by the orbiting mutant keep stabbing at Mercer. They slip in and out between strategic armor points. Alex doesn't care enough to stop them. He's being greedy, hoarding his precious biomass by not forming hardened armor over his entire form, but the absolute hunger he felt waking up is still forefront in his thoughts. It's better, Alex feels, to take a few hits now than to be left wanting when a greater challenge appears.
His predicament doesn't count. This 'gravity-mutant' has done more to stop him than any of the others here. And yet…the both of them know that she's staring at her own death. Neither flinch, watching with hardened resolve, as Alex's whipfist—transformed into something serrated and unweighted—goes straight for the eyes.
It's cut in half by the 'dagger-mutant'. The gravity-mutant blinks. Her eyes don't open, as thick blood congeals around the lids. Another layer of weight is added to Alex's shoulders, but he bears it with ease as he takes a step that sinks into the ground. Picking up a chunk of concrete, fingers cutting into it like butter, Alex chucks it straight to her head with deadly speed. He hears a crack with a grim smile stretching his mouth. A thud echoes under the racket as she falls bonelessly to the ground.
The force on his back vanishes with a suddenness that's disruptive. That moment of flying release is enough for a bed of daggers to lift her up and away before he can confirm her death. Regardless if she's alive, she won't be fighting anytime soon. Mercer cracks his neck in satisfaction, twisting his head side to side, as he views what's left.
From dozens of soldiers, whittled down, leaving only half their number. The mutants had come fewer, making each defeat hurt more, leaving the rest wary of the predator in their midst.
No one is rushing to face him head-on like before.
It's only been a minute.
Mercer is strong.
…To a point. He certainly feels like he's in control. The consumptions, small victories, and adaptations to the strange genetic make-up of his enemies has him feeling rejuvenated. His heart's beating a steady drum, and in that rhythm, Mercer has dissected the orchestra of this fight. He's got their mark, their fighting style, or whatever else they want to call it. He's sure of what they're going to do next.
Then they start retreating. Why? No, it's obvious, Mercer thinks. Even if they outnumber him, everyone knows this is a fight he cannot lose. So Mercer eyes their fleeing backs lazily. He'll make his way to the exit and finish off everyone too slow or dumb to leave before him—
Alex hears the thunder—
And a second later, he's embedded several feet deep into the far end of the facility's concrete wall. His blood and bits soak and scatter everywhere, as every part of him is pulverized or liquified. Parts of the wall rain down onto his struggling cells. Embodied in each is the entirety of his instinctual stubbornness and defiance. His regenerative abilities are pushed to their limit. Eyes, ears, nose, and mouth start to form. A loud, wet gasp is heard, followed by an inhuman growl. Then Alex feels the fire.
It's a lesser cousin to the inferno of a nuke. Only just. Its ferocity is all-consuming.
The combined attacks threaten Alex's survival in his weakened state.
Again Alex pushes his regeneration to his limits—and snarling—even further beyond, reforming at breakneck speeds. There are flaws, a thousand little differences between what is a human and what is just off, but it's the price he must pay to get back up. Mercer leaps out like a deformed bullet. He's diving straight towards the new challengers.
He never makes it.
He's punched. So, so, so hard. Blinking away his destroyed eyes, deafened to the sound of the impact with no ears, Mercer feels the broken wall with what remains of his broken body. He yells so loudly it vibrates his shattered bones, and that thrum of hate lifts clear his form of the new hole. One of his eyes regenerates. It narrows in on burning blue eyes and a literal burning body. Alex spits blood, watches one of the new mutants charge up another blow, and thinks beyond his current strategy. He doesn't have much time, so only modifications to himself can be made. Mercer needs enhanced muscles. His hammerfist quadruples in size and strength. And he needs a shield—something sturdy enough to tank bombs in the shape of men—so a braced and hardened slab of biomass replaces his left hand.
The massive air wave comes down on him like a hurricane. It makes the same comparison to the gravity-mutant look laughable. Nothing in the stadium is spared the buffeting winds. Mercer nearly isn't either, only barely deflecting the blow. The first one, that is, as the second one comes down like the Fist of God. It simply…deletes his arm. It's gone. His shield is no more. Like a crustacean escaping a predator, Mercer sacrifices a limb to live another moment. And another day if he can escape. There's nothing for him here with these two mutants.
There's no shame. Honest.
Mercer will recover to his prime and beyond. Then he'll challenge these two and see who's the apex.
That plan dies the second he thinks of it. Mercer tried to use the momentum of the punch to boost his speed. Tried and failed, as a wave of fire meets him. He's forced to dive head-first into an oven hot enough to cook even his cells alive. Alex nearly dies again there, before leaping out burning and burning, little more than a skeleton panicking at finding himself now in front of the mutant with super strength. His bones go every which way, scattered to the four winds summoned by that monumental punch, and Alex's skull and head-flesh finds itself embedded in a different piece of concrete wall.
There's more fire.
Just like the beginning of his life, it looks like the end will mimic it.
…But Mercer still has a few tricks up his sleeve, his aces snuck in from being an absolute cheater at fighting. He's not going to let this be the end of his story. He didn't then and isn't going to start now. The newly formed bones and flesh of his body, shooting from his head like vine-growths, not yet past his hips, condense into an inhuman form. A ball, layered with hardened biomass. And a different set of skin is formed besides it. It's a replica of his armored cells, akin to shedding of snake skin to fool predators. Once the fire ends, the two of his foes will see what appears to be a charred skull and torso.
Mercer hides in a burst of rolling. And…they fall for it.
An almighty explosion comes from below the two mutants. Concrete shatters upwards. The larger, more muscled man suddenly has a blunt spear of that material slamming into his gut. His companion yells, while the mutant spits blood as he's sent flying away. Retaliation is swift. The burning man creates a blazing inferno around Mercer.
It's less effective than before. Mercer has been adapting to his foes since they appeared. The intense heat buffets his whipfist, as it wraps around the legs of his opponent. There's a gasp of pain when his foe feels the barbs digging into the vulnerable flesh of skin and muscle. His challenger tries to burn away the binding, and when that doesn't work, fly away on wings of fire. Alex holds on, letting the man rip up gobs of meat from his struggles, while he endures the renewed fire and pain with a snarl. Mercer doesn't know why he's still fighting them. But this is making his anger feel so satisfied. He should be taking the opportunity to run. And yet…
Mercer shoots out harpoons from his legs to anchor himself. He's not fleeing. Maybe the hits to the skull affected his consciousness—there's no reason besides a deep desire to win and to inflict payback that has him pulling down the burning man like an angel dragged to Hell. The whip to the man's leg is like an anchor from a mighty ship, pulling him down to Earth. They lock gazes for a second. Then Mercer's other arm cocks back and punches the man in the face.
There are several crunches. And blood splatters. The man's nose and several teeth are broken—and only his nose and several teeth, because the bulk of Mercer's biomass wasn't in his fist. Instead of strengthening a blow to carve in a skull—something that would be deeply cathartic, Alex admits—Mercer had to pay the cost of empowering his whipfist and his leg anchors and all the fighting he did earlier and just not starving to death. It means the man doesn't die. It also means the man can't escape when he retaliates. Fire erupts from burning arms and legs. A growing mantra of "more…more!" reach Alex's ears.
The temperature reaches a breaking point—for Alex's fire resistant armor. The carapace cracks, then shatters in an explosion that throws the both of them away from each other. Alex tumbles into one of the many craters in the ground. His whipfist is gone and his leg harpoons are broken.
By now, the complex looks like something out of World War One. There's too many fissures, holes, and carved trenches for any normal building to remain standing. The concrete wounds from centuries ago blend in with the ones from the present. But this isn't any ordinary doomsday location. It was made to stand up against Mercer, and though almost all of the old equipment has been smashed, the foundations still stand. Even the towering half of the Alpha Aglamate Abomination has been reduced to charcoal-like chunks, its last half of ossified hard tissue burnt and crushed beyond any recognition.
Mercer isn't feeling much better himself. He sympathizes with that dead monster for one terrible moment. Its corpse is the closest connection Mercer has to the past, in another orgasmism, when the titans of strength that roamed the world were few in number. Or concentrated weapons in the hands of superpowers: nukes, chemical agents, bioweapons. He feels a terrible longing for that time. But it's a childish notion in the end.
The past is dead. And Mercer isn't going to gain back all of his old strength by wishing for it. The strength of the explosion must have done something else to his head, his consciousness, because the all-encompassing hunger and fury from earlier has diminished. Even Alex's bloodlust has been tamed, like the heat from the explosion was an ice-cold shower, and he…no longer feels the urge to keep fighting. There's more important things. Alex has to get out of here.
He shifts his form akin to a mass of boneless tendrils, burrowing through the cracks and crevices in the concrete. This shape is a risky one, with the thinness and lowered brain activity, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Alex is going to sneak his way out. He's relying on the two challengers to be too out of it to notice him.
They have to be lagging in will, right? Humans—even mutants—have some limits, and the fight must have been tiring for them.
…Alex is still going to proceed cautiously. He amplifies all of his senses, using his boneless nature to his advantage by creating sensory organs next to shallow cracks and under cover. He dampers his own smell just in case. Alex even shifts his cells to absorb primitive echolocation.
Soon, Alex hears more mutants and soldiers arrive. He curses silently, knowing his work just got harder. He's left the cavern but not the facility. He's been too slow flowing through the tunnel. Every step near him is startling, every rolling of heavy vehicles a risk to the cover he's hiding behind. Alex feels like he's being trapped in a circle, as the frequency of bodies and machines increase around him.
Then someone steps onto him. There's a splash of boneless fluid. Shouts of panic erupt, as the unfortunate soldier trips and falls while trying to get away from Alex. Mercer can kill him, here and now—even though it would change nothing in the grand scheme of things, it would be so satisfying to satiate his anger at failure on the poor man. And even practical: Alex is running far too low on biomass, having depleted most of what he gained in the same battle. But he doesn't. Alex lets the man run behind a squad of mutants that show up.
Engaging in a fight isn't what he wants anymore. Or needs. There's more ways to solve a problem than killing his way through…like this risky gamble. Using what little material he has left in him, Alex creates a white flag. It's the weakest and most vulnerable position he's been in since waking up. It's also the wisest. Alex knows he doesn't deserve mercy or diplomacy after what he put his past victims through, but there's a part of him putting his cards on human nature. However, as tough as it'll be, he'll accept it if they start shooting and restart the conflict. Alex doesn't intend to die tonight. He'll survive in one way or another.
The single protruding eye Alex has peeking out sees much disgust from the uncovered faces. Immediately, Alex marks the burning man with fire coiling around his body like clothing, and the burning blue eyes man with a body that could rival D-Codes. Everyone else is insignificant compared to them. They're all that's needed. The guns and other mutants fade into the background, as Alex comes to terms with losing again if the men decide to throw punches. He's already putting contingency plans in place, planning to regrow from small clumps of cells weeks from now if he must, hiding the bundles as discreetly as he can.
A strange standoff ensues. The white flag is pristine amidst the red and black flesh it emerged from.
When no one attacks him, Alex begins to consider how bizarre a boneless flesh would be to talk with. Would they even believe he can talk? Most likely not, unless…
Alex's mass shifts again. Everyone grows tense. Alex moves his flesh slowly, creating naked, visible lungs and a rudimentary mouth. It's a worse sight than the fluid, and a soldier off to the side—the same one that stepped in him—moves away and vomits.
After the organs are fully ready, Alex attempts to speak. Poorly. "Hellooo" leaves him in wet clicks and the sound of gravel. It's met with shock, then confusion as a burst of puzzled Japanese enters his ears. It's also a little embarrassing. Alex adjusts his vocal cords to something human. Then he calls upon his consumed dead to speak the language of the land, unwilling to let poor communication impede the talks that will surely follow.
Alex introduces himself.
"Hello."